“After what felt like hours, a nurse came and asked if I could come talk to him,” she said, failing to hold back the tears as she recounts what happened that night.

“Jamie was deteriorating and they needed him to fight for his life.

“The nurse was pumping his heart; I remember someone offered to take over but she wouldn’t. She said she wanted to fight for this young man.

“I was holding his hand. I looked up and the nurse was crying. He was gone. Jamie was gone.”

It later emerged driver McRae, 21, of Warren Lane in Arthington, had tested twice the drink drive limit.

In the minutes before the crash, he had been practicing handbrake turns in a nearby garden centre.

“The day he was charged with killing Jamie, he changed his Facebook profile picture to one of him having a pint and sticking his fingers up,” said Miss Strong.

“He got two years off his sentence for showing remorse. Seems a funny kind of remorse to me.”

In September 2001, McRae was jailed for four years for causing death by careless driving while unfit through drink and banned from driving for five years. Let out on licence, he served two.

“We’ve got a life sentence. He spent two years in prison,” said Miss Still. “They don’t treat this like any other crime. With a car involved, it’s an ‘accident’.

“This wasn’t an accident. He knew what he was risking when he got behind the wheel.”

PETITION

Sports mad, Jamie was a Leeds United season ticket holder and would go to every match with his grandfather Peter.

His little sister Rebecca, devastated at his loss, set up a petition campaigning for tougher sentences and secured 13,000 signatures which were presented to Parliament. But the law still hasn’t changed and the family are determined to carry on fighting.

“We don’t want any other family to go through what we have,” said Miss Strong. “I don’t want Jamie to have died in vain.”